James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
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It passed many by, but one of biggest names in indie graced York's basement venue on Saturday evening. Persistent rumours proved accurate when Franz Ferdinand announced a tour of intimate venues around the UK, starting at Fibbers - 'we haven't played this song since fibbers five years ago; it's good to be back' were vocalist Alex's opening words.
The support was courtesy of electro-indie-latin-american band from Chile, Panico. I was a little disappointed by them; therewere few musical references to their Latin-American roots, and the vocalist's voice was at times grating. Nonetheless, there were some nice touches, even if the band overall weren't particularly memorable; the use of decks and synths - including some unlikely samples - and the occasional use of Spanish were all appreciated by the crowd.
The biggest problem with Fibbers is the fact that it never feels packed to the rafters, even considering its small size; presumably fire safety restrictions are responsible, but larger venues often feel much more packed, even atmospheric. Nonetheless, the crowd, who were of remarkably mixed ages - predictably getting increasingly older towards the back of the venue - were mostly enthusiastic enough to make up for this; I suppose a 200-capacity gig that sells out at nine minutes after nine AM is inevitably going to filled with people who really want to see this band.
Franz, NME'S darlings for three years, winning their Philip Hall Radar Award, Best Track, Best Album and Best Live Band, emerged on to stage to a raucous reception and a crowd less overtly indie-oriented than usually seen at Fibbers. The set that followed contained more older songs than expected; the tour was announced to preview the forthcoming as yet untitled album, which has just been postponed until early 2009. Yet, we were treated to 'The Dark Side of the Matinee', 'Take me Out' (greeted, predictably by an ear-splitting reception from the crowd), 'Michael', and Walk Away (probably the highlight) amongst other older songs, as part of a 1 1/4 hour set. Talk of an African-influenced third album wasn't particularly confirmed or denied here; after Franz's one-off collaboration with rapper Kano and African musicians earlier in the year, the new songs weren't immediately obviously influenced in such a way, sounding instead in a similar vein to the previous two albums.
The band were clearly studying the crowd's reaction to the new songs intently; this is very much a project being worked on still; additionally, a forthcoming headline arena tour to accompany the album has to have its live arrangement considered. The band never put a tremendous amount of energy into the performance, and it appeared as though they'd taken the crowd's chants of 'Yorkshire!' to heart ('I think they're saying 'Glasgow',' said Alex) when they waited a long time before returning for an encore, with the techies already packing up their gear.
Overall, though, it was a pleasure to see a band as big as Franz Ferdinand at our tiny local venue, and we can only hope that the opening of a larger venue in July - The Duchess - will enable us to see bigger acts in York, and make it a naturally stop on a UK headline tour. Kudos to the band too for playing small venues, when they could easily have sold out academy venues (remember too when they were surprise support for the Cribs in a small Leeds venue?). Tickets for We Are Scientists at The Duchess in August are now on sale, which should be another good evening.
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